Diet Like Her

Today's guest blog comes from features editor Courtney Rubin.

It's like every dieter's dream: I went to bed one size and woke up another (smaller) one.

That’s what it feels like, anyway. In the first two weeks of SELF’s new five-week Drop 10 Challenge, I ate enough pizza, dark chocolate and red wine to lose 6 pounds (yes, really, and no, you’re not reading the National Enquirer). But suddenly, midway through week 3, everyone’s noticing.

“Have you lost weight?” says a woman at the gym this morning. (We seem to be on the same schedule: She’s there with her personal trainer on the same days I’m putting myself through the Drop 10 workout.) “You look slimmer.”

I buy my usual postworkout diet Sunkist (I know, I know, but I love it), and the woman in the corner shop—who’s never spoken to me—tells me I’m looking good and sucks in her stomach by way of explanation. Buoyed by all the kumbaya-ing, I decide to brave my closet. One of my inspirations for doing Drop 10 was that my wardrobe had shrunk to about four things. I had been telling myself it was too cold to wear most of my clothes, but deep down I knew the truth: They didn’t fit.

I test the water with a fairly forgiving half-wrap dress, and it fits. Ditto my favorite minidress. Emboldened, I try a very unforgiving gray chiffon skirt. It zips, with no pooching or muffin top. Hello, old friends, how I’ve missed you! I’m so busy trying on clothes that I’m late to work—which is when I end up in the elevator with SELF’s editor-in-chief, who says I look great and quizzes me about what I’m doing (and tells me I should explain en blog).

So for the record, this is what I’m doing. And because I’m fully aware I sound like an ad for Drop 10—not a position one wants to be in as a journalist—I should say that I’ve tried a ton of diets, and hated them all. (Five years ago I lost 93 pounds on a diet I made up myself.) I’m not being paid to do this diet. The closest to schwag I’ve extracted so far is a promise from SELF’s senior market editor Lindsay Huggins that she’ll help me find the awesomest pair of jeans ever if I reach my goal.

Right, back to the plan: I don’t eat one single thing I don’t love (see pizza and dark chocolate above). I don’t eat anything lowfat (or at least, anything that isn’t naturally that way). I eat carbs at every single meal. And I spend less time at the gym than I did before, not just because the Drop 10 workout takes only about 35 minutes, but because I don’t waste any time putzing around wondering what I should do or what I might feel like doing. It’s simple without being boring, tough without being impossible, and once you start it, it moves so quickly it’s hard not to finish. It’s the only magazine workout I’ve ever done eight times (so far)—actually, it’s the only magazine workout I’ve ever done all the way through even once.